


Penitence

by petalSpitter



Category: Darkest Dungeon (Video Game)
Genre: Blood, Bloodplay, Flails, Flogging, Guilt, Interesting Applications of, M/M, Painplay, Salt, first time posting smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:42:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22029520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petalSpitter/pseuds/petalSpitter
Summary: The guilt had become all-consuming tonight. On the most miserable night the hamlet had ever seen, the guilt forced him from his rickety bed, into a deluge from hell, and into the arms of the most repulsive penitence he could ever receive.
Relationships: Dismas/Damien, Highwayman/Flagellant
Comments: 4
Kudos: 58





	Penitence

Rain struck the hamlet like the Light wanted to punish the land for its sins.

Drops as fat as leather needles crashed into the earth in a massive deluge, churning the hard-packed dirt roads into murky quagmires that hungrily devoured half a man’s leg with every step. Ice-cold winds joined in the fury and whipped the needles into a frenzy, turning straight lines of piercing rain into dancing, twisting monstrosities that made the town square look like the heart of a raging sea to anyone lucky enough to be peering at it from the right side of a window.

Dismas was not that lucky.

He pulled his neckerchief tighter around his mouth, gritting his teeth underneath as he felt more freezing water drip down his neck and soak him to the skin. “‘Fuck’s the use of a padded overcoat if it’s as waterproof as a hooker’s drawers?” 

He kept his shoulders hunched and his head low as he trudged through the rain, the only heat to be felt for miles burning in his gaze as he stared up at the Abbey in the distance. The rain beat him down harder as he stared up at the towering pillars of holy stone and he tilted his head back further, praying that the lashing of the rain would beat the miserable thoughts out of his head.

Two shots through the windows like any other job. A bad tip. The wrong stagecoach. But knowing it was all the fault of lies on another man’s tongue wouldn’t scrub away the blood on his hands or the images on the back of his eyelids.

Dismas inhaled sharply, the cold air prickling at the back of his throat as his tongue turned to a frozen lump of meat in his jaw. He bowed his head, muttering a curse as the rain beat him further into the mud and the Abbey drew closer one inch at a time. What felt like hours later in the pounding storm, he made it to the stone steps, the mud-caked up to his knees sloughing off his legs and outlining his every footfall in filth as he ascended.

Dismas had never been to the Abbey before tonight. Despite how Junia and Reynauld tried to wax poetic about the place, it looked like any other building up close. The stones beneath his feet felt no holier than the boards on the tavern floor, and the wood felt as worn and as splintered as that of the barracks door beneath his knuckles. “Hello?”

Dismas muttered a curse and hit the door harder, dull pain radiating through his cold, numb flesh. “Hello?!”

“Oh, don’t fucking tell me-” He imagined the Abbott sleeping like a log and cursed the man, hoping his ears would burn hot enough to summon him to the door. 

“...and suck his semen out of that fucked dog like it was communion wi-” Dismas sharply shut his lips as the door creaked open on neglected hinges, revealing the withered, candlelit face of the Abbot.

“I wasn’t expecting anyone to come in this perilous storm,” He stepped back, pulling the door open. “Come in, come in, I apologize for the tardiness on my part. You must be soaked to the skin after such a trek.”

“I... Thank you, Father,” The words felt clumsy on his tongue as he spoke them, shame hot and heavy on his cheeks as he bent his head and stepped inside.

“The church ne’er turns away a soul seeking penitence,” The man intoned, his neutral gaze paired with a judgmental cock of his head perfected over decades of collecting the sins of man.

The inside of the church was just as unassuming as the outside, and the air that swirled around them was no warmer than the air outside. The stonework towered high above them, each hewn brick as cold and impassive as the clergy themselves. 

The Abbot made a move towards the center of the church. “The confessional is this-”

“I’m not here for confession, ” Dismas said. 

“Then for what?”

“For penitence.” The words seemed to burn as they crawled out of his throat, shame wrapping its long, sharp fingers around his neck and pressing a blush to his cheeks as he tried to avoid the Abbot’s eye.

Swallowing his pride to crawl here was even more difficult than pulling on his boots in the dead of night and forcing himself out into the storm. It was only when he couldn’t blink without seeing her bloodless, gaunt face that he finally threw himself into the storm and the church’s arms.

“Ah, I see,” The Abbot said flatly, nodding his head. “The Penitence Halls are below. You should be able to access them by following the corridor to your right until you reach the stairs.”

The implication was clear enough from the Abbot’s sleep-drunk tone and his languid gait. Dismas nodded wordlessly, grateful he didn’t have to suffer the embarrassment of the old man escorting him to an iron door, fully aware of what was to be done there. The man did not move from his spot as Dismas walked away, leveling his neutral, disapproving gaze at the muddy prints and puddles left in the gunslinger’s wake. 

Even when he was hidden from the man by thick curtains of stone and buried in the annals of the church, he could still feel the Abbot’s eyes gaze burning through the back of his neck. He kept on glaring over his shoulder and rubbing the back of his head, the shame burning hotter against his rain-soaked and wind-chilled skin.

The Penitence Halls, as to be expected this late at night and in this hellish weather, were empty. The pounding of the rain was muffled down here, half sunk in the earth such as the halls were, but the biting chill and the humidity seemed in here with ease. His every step echoed through the stone corridors with clarity unheard of outside choir halls and Dismas wondered what this place would sound like in full swing, with sinners in every chamber and a lash on every back.

As if to answer his question, the crack of a whip and the hiss of a man rang out from the furthest reaches of the halls.

A spark of voyeuristic curiosity ignited inside Dismas. He froze, grappling the choice to snuff out the urge or to feed it until it became a burning flame. Part of him wanted to see another’s inner demons wept out of their broken skin; while another wanted to hide away, cut himself until the pain burned her face out of his mind’s eye, and crawl back to the barracks with no one the wiser. Another crack rang out along with another howl of pain, and Dismas found himself inching closer to the sound, shifting his gait to that of a silent robber. 

There was a single open door at the furthest end of the halls, the whip-cracks and sighs from before erupting from it with increasing frequency as Dismas crept closer. The beginnings of familiarity began to prickle in the back of his mind, and with each cry from the unknown flagellant, Dismas could swear he’d heard that exact sound before. He was close enough to curl his fingers around the door frame when another crack tore through the air and Dismas finally recognized the groan of ecstasy that followed it. “...Damien?” 

The sounds stopped.

Dismas froze, a lifetime on the road guiding his hand to his dirk.

The silence stretched on for a while, the two men now acutely aware of each other and trying to size the other up with a wall of stone and iron between them.

“Unless you’ve taken to chipping peepholes to the walls, I’d say your best chance at voyeurism is standing at the door.”

Another hot lance of shame ran through Dismas, followed quickly by a blooming, acidic irritation. His lips peeled open for a reply, the words refusing to come. He closed his lips, stepping into the open doorway and hoping an answer would finally come.

“You wish I’d come here to gawk, you madman.” The room he found himself looking into was as bare, painted in shades of sickly yellow by the light of a sputtering lantern. In the center sat Damian, his bare, abused back to the door, a bloody flail across his lap, and a bucket of at his side.

Damien let out a dismissive huff as he twisted in his seat, recognition coming to him as well. “A faithless man in my house of penitence?” He reached into the bucket of salt beside him, grains raining through his fingers before he peppered it onto the myriad of gashes on his back, hissing in delight as the crystals caught in the wounds and soaked up his blood, turning soft shades of pink and orange as they did so. “The light must see fit to reward my devotion-” A shudder of rapture ran through the flagellant and the ripple of every muscle in his back was captured by the lantern light. “-Or to test it.”

The irritation Dismas felt melted away, an ugly confusion welling up in its place. The path from his tongue to his brain felt swollen, any retorts or replies he had refusing to come to his lips. 

“Well?” Damian tilted his head up, eyeing Dismas through his bloodsoaked hood. “Why did you come here?”

The words finally tumbled from his lips, his shame forgotten at the sight of Damian’s bloodied skin. “I need to be punished.”

The other man grinned, the bite marks on his lips yawning open wider. “For what?”

“For my sins. Isn’t that what everyone is punished for?”

“Hard to be forgiven for a sin you won’t reveal.”

“I wasn’t aware you were the damned Abbot. Why should I tell you what’s in my head?”

Damien rose to his feet, the miniscule height advantage he had over Dismas seeming to grow as he stepped closer. By the time he was close enough to lean down and whisper in his ear, the flagellant seemed ten feet tall. “If you could burn away the guilt and shame of your sins by yourself, your feet would not have found you here.”

Dismas went rigid. The other man’s breath was lukewarm on his skin but the chill it left behind burned worse than any winter wind that’d ever cut through his old coats. Damien poked him in the chest, pulling away to just enough to tell him to “Strip down to your waist, hang it all on the hooks by the door, and sit.”

Dismas obeyed, refusing to take his eyes off Damien’s as he sloughed his coat off like a waterlogged second skin. He let it fall to the floor at his feet, the sodden article weeping rainwater as his sweater and kerchief followed. Damien did not comment as Dismas stepped around the puddle of garments and collapsed into the chair. The wood was so sharp-edged and splintered Dismas wondered if it was a part of the torture as well.

Damien kicked the coat out of the way of the door and turned, worrying the straps of his flail between his bloody fingers. “Turn around.” 

Dismas obeyed again, spinning around and gripping the back of the chair tight. His cold and clammy flesh stuck to the wood uncomfortably as he dug his fingernails into his elbows, anticipation winding him up tighter than the preamble to any robbery. He held his breath, straining his ears for the sound of the other pulling back for the first strike.

He jumped in his skin when, instead, Damien slowly ran the ring of the flail up and down his back, the warmth of his hands working its way into every ridge of Dismas’s spine. The movement was hypnotic, massaging away tension he’d held tightly in his spine for years. He didn’t fully relax, however, with the threat of the lash whispered in the straps that ghosted his back.

Damien kept on working the flail into his back for several minutes, watching him relax into the chair until he molded himself against it as languidly as a cat.

He tensed the instant the ring and the heat of the other’s knuckles disappeared.

Damien ripped the flail across Dismas’ back, the sound of knots impacting flesh and the grunt of pain mixing in a beautiful melody timed to the tension rippling through the other. He repeated the act over the same spot, again and again, listening to the shocked gasps and pained groans that rolled out of the other as burning red welts began to rise on his skin. He lashed the other a final time before leaning in close, ghosting the ring over Dismas’ flesh again and watching with rapt interest as his skin jumped under the touch. 

“So many marks... and yet no wounds.” He pressed the cold metal into one of the highest welts and watched Dismas shudder in ecstasy, arching his back into the cold kiss of the steel. “That ought to be -  _ must be  _ \- resolved.”

The flail tore through his skin again, pain jolting through him and his eyes rolling back in his head as he felt the first ragged wound open up and weep. His blood hit the air and instantly turned ice-cold, running down his back in lazy, refreshing rivulets. The moan he let out at the feeling sounded downright whorish to his own burning ears and he clenched his teeth in a panic, the clack echoing in the sudden silence.

He heard Damien take a step forward. His stomach dropped into his aching groin and shame burned his face more intensely than the flail had burned his back. The other didn’t move, didn’t speak, and Dismas’ mind raced with the possibilities of what the other could do.

Mercifully, Damien seemed not to notice. He bent down at Dismas’ side, dipping his crimson-soaked hand into the salt and smearing more pink and orange through the piebald canvas. He raised his fist, white grains flowing through his fingers as he raised it above Dismas, raining salt down onto his open, weeping back. Dismas gasped as the first crystals hit his wounds, the burning pain turning downright acidic as the salt lapped up his blood and narrowed his world down to the searing, agonizing pain fizzling on his back.

“Did you like that?” Damien finally asked, his tone balanced on the knife’s edge between accusatory and lascivious. Breath swirled on the back of Dismas’ neck as he sucked in a breath, dread boiling in the pit of his stomach.

His dread was whisked away in a tidal wave of pain as Damian began to idly rub his fingertips into a weeping gash, the burn of the holy salt intensifying until his vision went white. He collapsed against the chair, head sagging down as a desperate, low groan rolled out of him.

“Well?” Damien pulled his hand away. Dismas gasped sharply at the absence and let out another groan, arching his back in a silent plea for more.

“Oh, god, please- I beg you- I need- Please, light take you, take me, please, god, please-” All the complex, holy words the church used to dress up the base act of cutting into one’s self fell out of Dismas’s head, and all that tumbled from his lips were shameless, desperate words of a man on the edge of rapture. 

“Now you’re seeing it.” Damien leaned closer, pressing his chest to Dismas’ back and wrapping his unsalted hand around his thigh. “This is the pleasure that the light provides...” He ran his hand up the other’s thigh and the words tumbling from his lips became more frantic, more desperate, barely fit for the painted lips of whores as he begged for his penitence.

“The light guides us all to a higher purpose, towards the rapture of true fulfillment in service of something far, far greater than we can ever hope to be.” 

Damian thrust his blood-slick hand under his waistband and stars exploded behind Dismas’ eyes as he felt that wet warmth smear on his belly and wrap around his neglected, weeping cock. The feeling of another’s slick hand stroking him was pure rapture, better than any rut he’d ever had in a haystack or brothel room. Dismas threw his hand back, his skull neatly slotting between Damien’s head and shoulder as he struggled to get enough air into his lungs, each exhale torn between moans of pleasure and senseless pleas for more.

He came faster than he’d ever had in his life, spurting into the other’s hand in what felt like seconds.

Damien pulled away and Dismas slumped forward in the chair, forehead pressed to the back, staring at his own flaccid cock. His mind felt scrubbed clean, free of all thoughts, all feelings, all guilt. Not even the thought of tucking himself back into his trousers tread through his emptied brain.

He heard something muttering, but it sounded too far away to be important. It kept muttering, though, and when it exploded near his ear for the seventh time he finally realized what it was.

“Dismas,” Damien held an old rag under Dismas’ nose. “Put this in your mouth.”   
The words moved through his brain sluggishly, but Dismas finally understood and obeyed, biting down on the copper tasting rag as Damien washed the salt from his wounds.

The pain felt worse without the cocktail of endorphins and arousal to dress it up, and Dismas groaned like a withered old man trying to rise from a chair as Damien scrubbed the canvas of his back clean. 

His waistband was uncomfortably damp by the time Damien began to slather on the healing salves, but his mind was still too far away from him to take note of it.

“You are soft in this practice,” Damien said, wringing out Dismas’ sweater before forcing it over his head. “Wait until the wounds are sealed to come again.”

“And if I don’t?” He pulled on his sweater, glaring at the other.

“Then the church has its ways.”

“Hmph. And I don’t suppose you’ll be enlightening on what those ways are?” Dismas rose slowly, trying not to betray the wobble in his step as he bent to pull on his overcoat. The welts on his back burned steadily, their previous red-hot agony now reduced to an afterburn.

“Careful, you almost sound like you're on the path to faith, dear Dismas.”

He didn’t dignify the other’s final remark with a response. He stumbled his way through the Penitence halls and up the stairs, his legs still jelly beneath him as he retraced his steps out the church door, throwing himself back into the deluge of raindrops fat as leather needles.


End file.
